Executive Branch

As the rising conservative clamor to "secure the border" -- whatever that means -- grows louder, the Obama administration is moving fast to pay for more border guards, customs and immigration agents, DEA agents, FBI task forces, and even a couple of unmanned drones -- about $600 million total of "emergency appropriations."

From a Supreme Court whose rulings too frequently defy both justice and common sense, finally, a decision that embraces both. The high court has unanimously held that a pair of petty drug offenses is not grounds for mandatory deportation of legal immigrants.

Canadian "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery has already run up against US federal prison rules, and is sitting in solitary confinement as a result.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to help balance the budget by cutting out almost all Medi-Cal funding for more than 35,000 methadone maintenance patients. The nicest thing opponents can say about that idea is that it's penny wise but pound foolish, and the legislature seems to agree. But the Governator can still wield the line-item veto, so the fight isn't over yet.

In what is most likely a bid to blunt a campaign issue -- border security -- for Republicans in this year's off-year elections, the Obama administration is sending more than a thousand troops to the Southwestern border.

Canadian marijuana activist and entrepreneur Marc Emery has now begun a journey toward freedom that will most likely take him five years to complete. He pleaded guilty in Seattle Monday.

Canadian "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery is now a resident of the American drug war gulag. He was extradited from Vancouver yesterday. Don't we all feel a bit safer now?

Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson Monday signed the extradition for "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery to begin serving five years in a US federal prison for selling pot seeds over the Internet. He was jailed on the spot in Vancouver, and could be in the American gulag by the time you read this.

Over the weekend, Newsweek published a leaked draft of the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy. No one is sure why it was leaked, or by whom. A pair of leading observers of federal drug policy dissect it for us.

Reed College in Portland, Oregon, has a decades-old reputation for rigorous academics and counterculture values. Now, after two Reed students died of heroin overdoses in two years, state and federal prosecutors are lowering the boom, starting with this weekends' annual end of school-year party.